A man has been jailed after a worker fell from the roof of a commercial property in North London and died a week later.
Patrick McCarthy (trading as All Care Home Improvements) was given a 14-month custodial sentence after the death of Mr Andrei-Ionel Hutanu in 2019. No scaffolding or other measures had been put in place to prevent falls from the roof.
Harrow Crown Court heard how 33-year-old Mr Hutanu and another man were working at the rear of a commercial premises in Neasden on 19 August 2019. While his co-worker had been instructed to remove building materials from a flat roof, Mr Hutanu had been instructed to carry out repair work on a tiled pitched roof. He was working on it from a roofing ladder when he fell approximately 16-feet onto a concrete alleyway below.
He fractured his neck and sustained other serious head injuries in the fall and despite being taken by air ambulance to St Marys Hospital in Paddington, he sadly died a week later, on 26 August 2019.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into the incident found 37-year-old McCarthy had failed to take any steps to prevent falls from height by failing to install scaffolding around the perimeter of the building or flat roof where both men were working.